Totalitarian Future - Part I

"On the first Christmas Day the population of our planet was about two
hundred and fifty millions -- less than half the population of modern China.
Sixteen centuries later, when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock,
human numbers had climbed to a little more than five hundred millions.
By the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, world population
had passed the seven hundred million mark. In 1931, when I was writing
Brave New World, it stood at just under two billions. Today, only twenty-seven
years later, there are two billion eight hundred million of us. And tomorrow
-- what?" - Aldous
Huxley - Brave New World Revisited - 1958

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging
to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down
over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war
in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in
Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi
Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding
and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico
under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate
collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing
a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation,
and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy
to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history? Why is the average American
economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis
in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal
Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly
five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs?
Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency
of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator
we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator
after we didn't like the policies of the democratically elected president?
Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend
into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary
overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S.
fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed
allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen
years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the
BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is
the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why is the U.S. government collecting every electronic communication made
by every American? Why is the U.S. government spying on world leader allies?
Why is the U.S. government providing military equipment to local police forces?
Why is the U.S. military conducting training exercises within U.S. cities?
Why is the U.S. government attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights?
Why is the U.S. government attempting to control and lockdown the internet?
Why has the U.S. government chosen to treat the Fourth Amendment as if it is
obsolete? Why is the national debt still rising by $750 billion per year ($2
billion per day) if the economy is back to normal? Why have 12 million working
age Americans left the workforce since the economic recovery began? How could
the unemployment rate be back at 2008 levels when there are 14 million more
working age Americans and the same number employed as in 2008? Why are there
13 million more people on food stamps today than there were at the start of
the economic recovery in 2009? Why have home prices risen by 25% since 2012
when mortgage applications have been at fourteen year lows? Why are Wall Street
profits and bonuses at record highs while the real median household income
stagnates at 1998 levels?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval
levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than
they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence?
Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate
government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why
do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges,
and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public
allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96%
of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children
to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have
Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy
and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through
massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural
environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read,
think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification,
and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms,
liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why
will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy?
- Because we never learn the lessons of history.

There are so many questions and no truthful answers forthcoming from those
who pass for leaders in this increasingly totalitarian world. Our willful ignorance,
apathy, hubris and arrogance will have consequences. Just because it hasn't
happened yet, doesn't mean it's not going to happen. The cyclicality of history
guarantees a further deepening of this Crisis. The world has evolved from totalitarian
hegemony to republican liberty and regressed back to totalitarianism throughout
the centuries. Anyone honestly assessing the current state of the world and
our country would unequivocally conclude we have regressed back towards a totalitarian
regime where a small cabal of powerful oligarchs believes they can control
and manipulate the masses in their gluttonous desire for treasure. Aldous Huxley
foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due
to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down
of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New
World.

Is There a Limit?

"At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the
death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population
of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than
half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will
be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and productive areas are
already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic
efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral
capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken
sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay." - Aldous
Huxley - Brave New World Revisited - 1958

Demographics are easy to extrapolate and arrive at an accurate prediction,
as long as the existing conditions and trends remain relatively constant. Huxley
was accurate in his doubling prediction. The world population was 2.9 billion
in 1958. It only took 39 years to double again to 5.8 billion in 1997. It has
grown by 24% in the last 17 years to the current level of 7.2 billion. According
to United Nations projections, world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion
in 2050. The fact that it would take approximately 70 years for the world's
population to double from the 1997 level reveals a slowing growth rate, as
the death rate in many developed countries surpasses their birth rate. The
population of the U.S. grew from 175 million in 1958 to 320 million today,
an 83% increase in 56 years.

The rapid population growth over the last century from approximately 1.8 billion
in 1914, despite two horrific world wars, is attributable to cheap, easy to
access oil and advances in medical technology made possible by access to cheap
oil. The projection of 9.6 billion in 2050 is based upon an assumption the
world's energy, food and water resources can sustain that many people, no world
wars kill a few hundred million people, no incurable diseases spread across
the globe and there is no catastrophic geologic, climate, or planetary events.
I'll take the under on the 9.6 billion.

Anyone viewing the increasingly violent world situation without bias can already
see the strain that overpopulation has created. Today, six countries contain
half the world's population.

A cursory examination of population trends around the world provides a frightening
glimpse into a totalitarian future marked by vicious resource wars, violent
upheaval and starvation for millions. India, a country one third the size of
the United States, has four times the population of the United States. A vast
swath of the population lives in poverty and squalor. India contains the largest
concentration (25%) of people living below the World Bank's international poverty
line of $1.25 per day. According to the U.N. India is expected to add 400 million
people to its cities by 2050. Its capital city Delhi already ranks as the second
largest in the world, with 25 million inhabitants. The city has more than doubled
in size since 1990. The assumptions in these U.N. projections are flawed. Without
rapidly expanding economic growth, capital formation and energy resources,
the ability to employ, house, feed, clothe, transport, and sustain 400 million
more people will be impossible. Disease, starvation, civil unrest, war and
a totalitarian government would be the result. With its mortal enemy Pakistan,
already the sixth most populated country in the world, jamming 182 million
people into an area one quarter the size of India and one twelfth the size
of the U.S. and growing faster than India, war over resources and space will
be inevitable. And both countries have nuclear arms.

More than half the globe's inhabitants now live in urban areas, with China,
India and Nigeria forecast to see the most urban growth over the next 30 years.
Twenty-four years ago, there were 10 megacities with populations pushing above
the 10 million mark. Today, there are 28 megacities with areas of developing
nations seeing faster growth: 16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 in Africa,
3 in Europe and 2 in North America. The world is expected to have 41 sprawling
megacities over the next few decades with developing nations representing the
majority of that growth. Today, Tokyo, with 38 million people, is the largest
in the world, followed by New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila,
and Karachi - all exceeding 20 million people.

To highlight the rapid population growth of the developing world, the New
York metropolitan area containing 18 million people was ranked as the third
largest urban area in the world in 1990. Today it is ranked ninth and is expected
to be ranked fourteenth by 2030. The U.S. had the fewest births since 1998
last year at 3.95 million. We also had the highest recorded deaths in history
at 2.54 million. The fertility rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is now 83.1 births
per 1,000 women, a record low. That combination created a gap in births over
deaths that is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

This is the plight of the developed world (U.S., Europe, Japan) and even China
(due to one child policy). According to the U.N. report, the population of
developed regions will remain largely unchanged at around 1.3 billion from
now until 2050. In contrast, the 49 least developed countries are projected
to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in
2050. The rapid growth of desperately poor third world countries like Nigeria,
Afghanistan, Niger, Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda will create tremendous strain
on their economic, political, social, and infrastructural systems. Nigeria's
population is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2050. Japan, Europe and Russia
are in demographic death spirals. China is neutral, and the U.S. is expected
to grow by another 89 million people. I wonder how many of them the BLS will
classify as not in the labor force.

What are the implications to mankind of the world adding another billion people
in the next twelve years, primarily in the poorest countries of Asia, Africa
and South America? What does the world think of the U.S., which constitutes
4.4% of the world's population, but consumes 20% of the world's oil production
and 24% of the world's food? Will there be consequences to having the 85 richest
people on earth accumulating as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, with
1.2 billion surviving on less than $1.25 per day? Can a planet with finite
amount of easily accessible financially viable extractable resources support
an ever increasing number of people? Is there a limit to growth? I believe
these questions will be answered in the next fifteen years as the dire consequences
play out in civil strife, resource wars, totalitarian regimes, and societal
collapse. Fourth
Turning Crisis cycles always sweep away the existing social order and replace
it with something new. It could be better or far worse.

Impact of Over-Population

"The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources,
to social stability and to the well-being of individuals -- this is now
the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem
certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter.
Unsolved, that problem will render insoluble all our other problems. Worse
still, it will create conditions in which individual freedom and the social
decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost
unthinkable. Not all dictatorships arise in the same way. There are many
roads to Brave New World; but perhaps the straightest and the broadest
of them is the road we are traveling today, the road that leads through
gigantic numbers and accelerating increases." - Aldous
Huxley - Brave New World Revisited - 1958

The turmoil roiling the world today is a function of Huxley's supposition
that over-population pushes societies towards centralization and ultimately
totalitarianism. The relentless growth in the world's population, not matched
by growth in energy resources, water, food, and living space, results in increasing
tension, anger, economic decline, government dependency, war and ultimately
totalitarianism. Huxley believed politicians and governments would increasingly
resort to propaganda and misinformation to mislead citizens as the problems
worsened and freedoms were revoked. Could this recent statement by our commander
and chief of propaganda have made Edward
Bernays and Joseph Goebbels any prouder?

"The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than
it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better
fed then it's ever been. It is more educated than it's ever been."

I'm sure the people living in Gaza, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Thailand, Turkey, Africa and American urban ghettos would concur with Obama's
less violent than ever mantra. Disease (Cholera, Malaria, Hepatitis, Aids,
Tuberculosis, Ebola, Plague, SARS) and malnutrition beset third world countries,
while the U.S. obesity epidemic caused by consumption of corporate processed
food peddled to the masses through diabolical marketing methods enriches the
mega-corporate food companies, as well as the corporate sick care complex.
Religious wars and culture wars rage across the world as intolerance for others
beliefs reaches all-time highs. After three decades of government controlled
public education they have succeeded in dumbing down the masses through social
engineering, propaganda, and promoting equality over excellence. Obama should
stop trying to think and stick to what he does best - golf and fundraising.
After reading his drivel, I'm reminded of a far more pertinent quote from Huxley:

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

The chart below details the fact that 12% of the world's population in countries
producing 9% of the world's oil are currently in a state of war. The violence,
war, and civil unrest roiling the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan
are a direct result of U.S. meddling, instigation, and provocation. The U.S.
government funds dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi) until they no
longer serve their interests, engineer the overthrow of democratically elected
leaders in countries (Iran, Egypt, Ukraine) that don't toe the line, and dole
out billions in military aid and arms to countries around the world in an effort
to make them do our dirty work and enrich the military industrial complex.
The true motivation behind most of the violence, intrigue and war is the U.S.
need to maintain the U.S. petro-dollar hegemony and to control the flow of
oil and natural gas throughout the world. The ruling oligarchy's power, influence,
and wealth are dependent upon dictating currency valuations and flow of oil
and gas from foreign fiefdoms.

In Huxley's 1931 Brave New World fable the world's population is maintained
at an optimum level (just under 2 billion) calculated by those in control.
This is done through technology and biological manipulation. Procreation through
sexual intercourse is prohibited. Creation of the desired number of people
in each class is scientifically determined and the classes are conditioned
from birth to fulfill their roles in society. When Huxley reassessed his novel
in 1958's Brave New World Revisited he didn't argue for an optimum level of
population. He simply hypothesized a close correlation between too many people,
multiplying too rapidly, and the formulation of authoritarian philosophies
and rise of totalitarian systems of government.

The introduction of penicillin, DDT, and clean water into even the poorest
countries on the planet had the effect of rapidly decreasing death rates around
the globe. Meanwhile, birth rates continued to increase due to religious, social
and cultural taboos surrounding birth control and the illiteracy and ignorance
of those in the poorest regions of the world. The ultimate result has been
an explosion in population growth in the developing world, least able to sustain
that growth. Huxley just uses common sense in concluding that as an ever growing
population presses more heavily upon accessible resources, the economic position
of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.

It essentially comes down to the laws of economics. Most of the developing
world is economic basket cases. They cannot produce food, consumer goods, housing,
schools, infrastructure, teachers, managers, scientists or educated workers
at the same rate as their population growth. Therefore, it is impossible to
improve the wretched conditions of the vast majority, as they wallow in squalor.
Unless a country can produce more than it consumes, it cannot generate the
surplus capital needed to invest in machinery, agricultural production, manufacturing
facilities, and education. The rapidly growing population sinks further into
poverty and despair. Huxley grasps the nefarious implications for freedom and
liberty as over-population wreaks havoc around the globe:

"Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes precarious, the central
government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general
welfare. It must work out elaborate plans for dealing with a critical situation;
it must impose ever greater restrictions upon the activities of its subjects;
and if, as is very likely, worsening economic conditions result in political
unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must intervene to preserve
public order and its own authority. More and more power is thus concentrated
in the hands of the executives and their bureaucratic managers." - Aldous
Huxley - Brave New World Revisited - 1958

Despots, dictators, and power hungry presidents arise in an atmosphere of
fear, scarce resources, hopelessness, and misery. As the power of the central
government grows the freedoms, liberties and rights of the people are diminished
and ultimately relinquished.

In Part
II, I will examine our relentless path towards totalitarianism and
war.